


I Will Always Be Here

by hellowkatey



Series: Febuwhump 2021 [25]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: BAMF Obi-Wan Kenobi, Car Accidents, FebuWhump2021, Fluff, Gen, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, Hurt Anakin Skywalker, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Padawan Anakin Skywalker, Protective Obi-Wan Kenobi, Recovery, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29704485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellowkatey/pseuds/hellowkatey
Summary: Anakin takes a joyride on the Temple speeders but manages to catch the attention of some road-ragers.[Febuwhump day 25: car (speeder) accident (ch.1) & day 26: recovery (ch. 2)]
Relationships: Bant Eerin & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Series: Febuwhump 2021 [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138259
Comments: 7
Kudos: 54





	1. Accident

Anakin is quite confident in the fact that there is nothing better than the feeling of flying. An open cockpit, the wind blowing his hair back so his padawan braid waves in the wind. He weaves in and out of the busy Coruscant traffic. He likes flying through rush hour best, something that Master Obi-Wan thinks him crazy for. It reminds him of pod racing back on Tattoine-- it has everything but the stupid sand that always kicks up in his eyes: People cutting in front of him, yelling obscenities at him as he passes, some try to physically knock him out of the sky. 

If he thinks hard enough, he can hear his mother's voice cheering him on. She never liked him pod racing, but she always cheered him on. 

Master Obi-Wan on the other hand, detests his flying. He doesn't like it when he flies the both of them and likes it even less when he goes off on his own. He claims it's "dangerous" to fly on Coruscant. Anakin thinks if he ever saw a real pod race, he'd agree a little traffic is nothing. Besides, if he gets a little flying out of his system a few times a week, then he is less inclined to try to annoy his master into letting him pilot. It's a win-win all-around.

As he does a barrel-roll over a bright red speeder, sending the driver into an angry tizzy, he laughs aloud. A few horns accompany. He pretends it's the hollers of applause. 

Anakin pulls off into another lane, this one going much faster than the others. He grins and presses on the acceleration. His speeder is narrow, small enough to fit between the gap between two flashily-painted speeders. And so he pushes forward, wedging himself inches from both of the speeders. 

What Anakin didn't anticipate were the other two speeders to match his speed. He looks between them uneasily, two Trandosians with amused grins on their faces. Like they were hoping he'd try this. Anakin tries to increase his speed, and they copy. He slows, they slow. 

"C'mon fellas," Anakin yells across the howling of the wind. "This is my exit." 

One of them just cackles, and the other swerves off. The Jedi padawan relaxes, but then feels a sharp bump against the side of his speeder. His head snaps to the side, and the other Trandosian is glaring at him. 

"Then exit," he growls, and he slams against the speeder again, harder this time. Anakin's eyes narrow, and he slams back.

"I've beat _sleemos_ like you when I was five! Quit it!" 

His body is thrust in the other direction, and he looks with wide eyes at the reemergence of the other Trandosian. Now, Anakin has participated in many pod races in his short life, but he suddenly realizes that he isn't zooming through the Dune Sea or the outskirts of Mos Espa, but hundreds of meters above the surface of a very busy megapolis-- _thousands_ of levels above the very bottom of the planet. Though he isn't afraid, he suddenly gets a burst of cautiousness. 

His worry comes too late, though, because now he has two speeders flanking him from either side with seemingly no intention of letting him go. 

"You'll learn your manners, boy," the second snaps, and Anakin is slammed into the speeder of the other especially hard, which makes his head feel like it's rattling around in his skull, but it at least gives him the space to escape their grasp. He presses the acceleration pedal all the way down, surging ahead of his road ragers. 

Had he left a second earlier, he probably would have made it. But the Trandosian he crashed into managed to recover, bumping the back end of his speeder and sending him into a tailspin. Anakin screams as the world around him spins into a blur of color and horns and incoherent yelling that get lost in the whistle of the air. 

The Force is also screaming, but Anakin is too panicked to make out what it's trying to say. His downward momentum is pulling him against his seatbelt, too far to reach the steering apparatus. He curses a string of Huttese words his mother would have made him stand in a corner for saying as he tries to concentrate on turning the wheel. 

By the grace of the Force, the speeder straightens, the surface of Coruscant suddenly much closer than it was seconds ago. Too close. He pulls up on the steering, hoping for a last miracle, but he's moving much too fast. 

Anakin's speeder crashes into the ground, hissing and crumbling as the roll guard snaps up and Anakin's world goes upside-down once more

* * *

Any other day, Obi-Wan is willing to look past his padawan's... extracurricular activities. He isn't blind to the fact that Anakin likes to disappear sometimes, as does a particular Temple speeder that has been suspiciously modified to move much quicker than the others. But connecting with Anakin can be difficult, and he always reappears in a good mood, so Obi-Wan figures it's a secret he will let the kid keep.

Qui-Gon was also quite complimentary about his flying skills. Though Anakin's particular brand of flying is not Obi-Wan's... ideal method of getting from one point to the next, he supposes he's competent enough. 

But unfortunately, today is not any other day because the council alerted him of a mission, and he had to vaguely explain to an unamused Mace Windu what he meant by needing to "track down his padawan". Anakin isn't answering his commlink, and so now Obi-Wan finds himself on a speeder, weaving through Coruscant's traffic. 

_Blast, Anakin we are going to have a very long talk about answering your commlink_ , he thinks as he has to pull a hard right to follow the tracking beacon of Anakin's speeder. This boy will be the death of--

The Force cries out in a burst of panic and fear, and up ahead Obi-Wan watches a bright green speeder slam into a smaller one, sending it tumbling out of the sky. He doesn't hesitate before slamming his steering wheel down, cutting out of the flow of traffic and beelining for the out-of-control speeder. He can feel Anakin from here, his panic palpable. Obi-Wan reaches through their bond, hearing the echo of his thoughts in his own head. _Just... straighten._

 _He isn't going to get it,_ he realizes, and Obi-Wan stretches out with the Force, wrapping every ounce of his powers around the spinning speeder, and he _tugs_. Anakin's vehicle comes to a sudden halt in its downward twirl, but his momentum is still too great. Obi-Wan sees it happen before it does-- the speeder rolling and crumbling with every rotation along the ground Anakin miraculously found. 

And then he hears the crunch of durasteel crumbling against ferrocrete, and a sharp cry ring through the commotion. It's so much worse than his momentary glimpse of it all. 

"Anakin!" he yells, his yell guttural and pained. Obi-Wan skids his speeder to a stop a few meters away from where the wreckage lies, jumping from his seat before he has a chance to stop. His muscles feel heavy from using his Force powers, and he is hardly able to cushion his impact into the ground, but he doesn't care. The speeder is at rest now, but it looks more like a pile of junk than something that was flying just moments before. He can't see Anakin, but he can hear him-- a low groan punctuated by a sharp wheeze. The Jedi Knight runs to the other side, drawing in a breath and trying to hold onto a calm mood as he surveys the severity of the scene. 

Anakin is wrapped in the crumpled durasteel like a cocoon, his body folded in on himself and his head leaning heavily against what's left of the door. He can see the blood trickling from his nose, and a deep cut at his hairline covering half his face with blood. The rest of his body is unknown.

 _It's not as bad as it looks._ _It's not as bad as it looks..._

Obi-Wan takes out his lightsaber and carefully carves away the pieces of the speeder to get him out. He can hear emergency services pulling up, their sirens wailing. And he hears the sound of Master Windu's voice and only vaguely remembers pressing the emergency beacon on his commlink. A hand on his shoulder. A voice whose words don't quite compute. And then a hand on his wrist, stopping his progress. 

The Jedi Knight snaps back into reality to find Mace Windu looking at him with a placid expression.

"Let them do their job, Knight Kenobi," he says, and suddenly he is aware of a team of Coruscant guards and Temple healers standing by. "Go back to the Temple and wait for him to be assessed." 

"But--"

"Obi-Wan," he says, stern but pleading. "Temple. That's an order." 

His throat feels tight and he realizes the hand that Windu isn't holding steady is shaking. He nods, deactivating his saber and stepping back. The Jedi Master's hand remains on his shoulder, guiding him away as the healers draw their own shortened sabers and finish the job. 

He sees them pull out his body, and really that's all it looks to be. Anakin remains still-- very still. Too still amongst the chaos that ensues around him. Usually, his padawan is the source of the vibrant energy that fills a room, but now he's just... 

He can feel their bond. Feel how it's muted and strained. _I'm here,_ he projects through it, unsure whether Anakin can hear him or not. _I'm here, for you my padawan._

Another gentle suggestion from Windu to continue. Obi-Wan looks away as they are loading him onto a stretcher. 

There's so much blood. 

Obi-Wan looks to the sky, hoping that maybe if he tilts his head back the tears will stay put. But as he does, a distinctive neon green speeder flies overhead, too low to be in the traffic lane and too fast to be landing. His eyes narrow, and Obi-Wan knows his next objective. 


	2. Recovery

The smell of antiseptic is making Obi-Wan dizzy. He stands in the doorway-- not of Anakin's room in the Hall of Healing, but of the door to the halls itself. From here he can watch the bustle of healers and padawans running about, all too pre-occupied with treating the sick and injured to pay attention to the bystander with red-rimmed eyes. 

Except for one. A Mon Calamari in olive green and white robes, her silver eyes immediately falling onto him as she exits a room. Bant Eerin crosses the busy floors with ease, scanning over him in the usual healer fashion as she approaches. 

"Hello Obi-Wan," she says, giving him a warm but tight smile. She moves to stand next to him, her back against the wall he's leaning against. "How is he?" 

"Broken leg, dislocated shoulder, four cracked ribs, a hefty concussion, and lots of bruising and superficial wounds to go around." 

She sucks in a breath. He can feel her gaze on him, but he stares forward. 

"He's lucky," she says. 

"No such thing," Obi-Wan sighs. "He shouldn't have even been there in the first place. I canceled our meditation for today because I had a headache. If I had just..." he lets himself trail off. Bant seems to take it upon herself to finish his sentence for him.

"You can't blame yourself, Obi." 

"I don't blame--"

"But you do." 

Obi-Wan draws in a slow breath through his nose and then lets it out again. 

"You weren't there, Bant. I tried to stop the speeder as it fell but..." 

"That takes enormous strength to overpower an out-of-control projectile. You did all you could." 

"I couldn't stop it," his voice cracks like it did when he was a young padawan. Though his oldest friend is no stranger to seeing him shed tears, he isn't keen on drying in the middle of the halls. 

"You did what you could," she reassures him, slipping her hand into his and squeezing firmly. "I saw the accident report. The height he was falling... Obi-Wan you very likely saved his life."

"We won't know that until he wakes up." 

They told him Anakin's body is processing the trauma. He may sleep for a few hours or a few days, they aren't sure. It's the not-knowing that has Obi-Wan on edge. Though the reasonable part of his mind is telling him Bant is right-- Anakin would have perished in that ancient without his intervention-- he also is haunted by what could have been if he was not there. A shiver goes up his spine, reminding him of how numb he feels. 

Bant's commlink goes off, paging her to her next task. She looks at him, as though asking permission to leave and do her job. 

"I'll be okay," he says, giving her a small smile. 

"I'll come to check on you in a bit," she promises. Bant pushes off the wall and starts to walk off to one of the rooms, but then she stops, turning around slowly. "I heard a rumor." 

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow. "The Temple does love spreading those." 

"Two Trandosians walked into the Coruscant Police..." 

"This sounds like one of those jokes--" 

"They confessed to causing a horrible crash that a young boy was involved in. They were arrested on sight."

Obi-Wan stares back at her, nodding. "It sounds like they did the right thing."

Bant clicks her tongue, nodding back. "Though, I also heard they looked like they themselves were in their own accident." 

"The Force works in mysterious ways." 

"Hmm," is all she vocalizes before turning back around and continuing to her destination. 

Obi-Wan watches her disappear into another room. Beneath the billowing sleeves of his robe, he rubs his thumb over the tender flesh of his swollen knuckles. 

* * *

Anakin woke up almost a full day after his accident. He woke up, surprisingly, not in pain, and to his Master sitting at his bedside looking as though he didn't dare sleep for the entire twenty-three hours. He was wrapped in so many bandages it was difficult to move but was assured even without them, his range of motion would be limited. 

"This is going to be a long road, Anakin," Master Kenobi had told him while rubbing circles over the back of his hand. With all the drugs coursing through his system, even that was a hazy blur. 

The pain came.

A few days later, when he was released from the halls.

He woke up in the middle of screaming while his mind replayed the progression of him falling hopelessly into the ground. He woke up feeling as though his body was being crushed, and as it turned out, it _had been_. Somehow seeing his leg in a cast and nearly every part of his body wrapped in bacta strips hadn't quite processed in his brain as being painful yet. Obi-Wan ran in in his night pants and undershirt twisted halfway around his body. 

"Anakin what is--"

"It hurts," he bellowed, feeling like a baby for his childish whines, but his leg felt like it was being broken all over again and every cut and bruise on his arms, legs, and torso seemed to be on fire. Though his master is an adult with a beard and sixteen years of life over Anakin, he can see the inexperience and uncertainty in his tired face. He isn't sure he's ever seen Obi-Wan seem so lost, but his eyes flickering around the room searching for an answer that isn't going to be in a teenager's bedroom shows the mild panic. 

"Script.. where's your medicine, Ani," he says, with feigned calmness. 

"Fresher," he says, screwing his eyes shut. He hears quick footsteps to their fresher, and the water running. The next thing he knows there's a glass being pressed to his lips and a cool cloth wiping away the sweat that has beaded on his forehead. Anakin swallows the pills, hoping for immediate relief despite knowing he will have to wait. Obi-Wan leaves the cloth on his head, brushing his hair from his forehead. 

"Breathe, padawan," he whispers. "I'm here." 

It's words he's heard before, he realizes. When he was lying in the wreckage, somewhere in the in-between of consciousness and unconsciousness, he heard his Master's voice. It didn't make sense before. How could his master have been there? 

But as his wreck has flashed before his eyes many times since it happened, something occurs to him. 

"You turned the wheel." Anakin rasps. 

"What?" 

"You stopped the spinning. I heard you, Master." His room is shroud in darkness, only the dim light from the fresher to illuminate Master Kenobi's face, but it's enough to see the way he looks past Anakin instead of at him. "You _were_ there." 

"I really tried, Anakin. I was-- I wasn't strong enough to stop it." 

The feeling of his pain melting away is a drastic shift. Anakin's eyelids grow heavy as sleep tries to pull him under. Before he does, he grabs his master's hand. 

"I'm glad you were there, Master," he says, his words slurring into one another, but it's coherent enough. Sleep takes him. 

Anakin still has a week before he's cleared again. A month out on medical, and he still has one more week. Though he's done four weeks of this already, a whole seven more days feels like forever. It's been a long month.

A very, _very_ long month. 

For all intents and purposes, Anakin thinks he's better _now_. He can walk on his leg, even jog if Obi-Wan isn't around to scold him for it. His bruises have all but faded, as has the pain. Why he has to wait so long to get back into his training is beyond him, and his master has offered no better answers than ' _healer's orders, Anakin'_ or ' _you may feel healed but some things take time'_

Training to be a Jedi knight also takes time, but he doesn't seem so concerned about that, now, does he?

Anakin feels fine, and he won't fall behind for the sake of caution. _Jedi take risks_. When Obi-Wan leaves to go spar with Quinlan Vos, Anakin declines the invitation to come watch them, claiming he has some homework to finish. His master leaves--hesitantly. Anakin should have known homework was a poor excuse to pass up watching him spar, but he couldn't risk saying he had a headache or something and potentially push back his clear date.

He leaves the apartment, choosing the training sala that's the furthest from the knight's one. There are only a few other padawans milling about, most of them older that Anakin doesn't recognize. He chooses a station on the end that is difficult to see from the door. 

The hum of his lightsaber is a sound he missed. He waves it around slow and steady to hear the buzz of the air around it getting caught in the energy field. Anakin raises it up into the first kata of form I and then moves through the different motions. 

He moves through the motions, his body a little stiff but he remembers the positions well. After a few rounds, he fires up the training droid and turns it up to his usual intensity. Anakin bounces on the balls of his feet, feeling the first shot from the levitating droid before it emits from the electrodes. He moves his lightsaber to block it, imitating the second position of the form. Within seconds, the droid is sending out another shot, and then another. 

While usually, this intensity is a warmup, Anakin quickly finds himself becoming overwhelmed by the rapid firing of the droid. His form quickly dissolves into frantic and sloppy blocks that send the shots in every direction. His cheeks burn a dark crimson, half from embarrassment and half from exertion at how hard his heart is beating right now. This was never so difficult! It's going so fast he doesn't have a moment to free his hand and grab the remote he stupidly left on the bench beside the sala. A few of the shots manage to break through his blocks, and he winces through the sharp jolts. 

_Come on,_ he thinks as he tries to concentrate on levitating the remote to him. The training bolts and electric shocks are distracting though, and the remote only shakes. He groans in exasperation, finally letting go of his lightsaber with one hand and stretching it out toward the remote. He is immediately bombarded with a rain of shocks that makes him stagger back. 

But the remote finally soars from the bench, flying across the sala. Too fast. Anakin's eyes widen as it shoots toward him. He reaches out his hand but it sails past him and into the outstretched hand of Master Kenobi. 

The training droid shuts down immediately, and Anakin drops to his knees, panting hard. He stares down at the ground, letting his too-long hair hang over his eyes so he can't see the disapproving look he is probably receiving right now. 

"Padawan... what do you think you're--" 

"I've done that level a hundred times," Anakin interrupts, staring at the deactivated droid. He has the sudden urge to cut it in two. 

"You did that level when you were at the peak of your fitness," Obi-Wan says carefully. His voice is softer now. Anakin still doesn't look at him, but he hears him lower himself to the ground and sit across from where he kneels. "You are still recovering." 

"I feel fine, though." 

"Perhaps, but you must let yourself fully heal and then ease back into things. You will not be at the level you were before the accident. It will take practice, Anakin." 

He finally looks at Obi-Wan. "I just want things to go back to the way they were. Where I could train and spar and stuff without feeling like a weak youngling." 

"You will get there, Anakin. I know you certainly have the motivation to work hard and gain your strength back," he cocks his head to the side, his blue eyes looking over him carefully. "But you must also listen to yourself. Recovery from such injuries is not going to happen overnight."

"It's been a _month_!" 

"Or even a month. There may be things you can never do as well again, and some things you will find could be easier now. Either way, you just have to adapt to the way things are now." 

He sighs. His heartbeat is finally returning to normal and he slides down from his knees into a sitting position.

"There will be things I can't do anymore?" 

"Well yes, take speeders out for joyrides being one of them." 

Anakin rolls his eyes. "So I'll never fly again, is what you're saying." 

Obi-Wan smiles and shakes his head. "I'm not an imbecile, Anakin. I know how much you like flying and I know you've been doing this for a while... thinking I don't know." 

His eyes widen. "You _knew?"_

"Yes. Just like I knew you certainly weren't doing homework this afternoon. You'd be surprised the things I let you get away with."

" _Let me_?" he echos in awe. 

"Beside the point. You can still take the speeders out, Anakin," Anakin jumps back to his knees with glee, a huge smile spreading across his face. 

"Really, Master?" 

"But you must tell me when you're going."

"Okay!"

"And always answer your commlink and keep your beacon on." 

"I answer my--" Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow. Anakin trails off, his cheeks flushing. _Okay fine,_ "I'll answer my commlink." 

"Good. Then we have a deal." The Jedi Knight rises from the ground, looking down at Anakin with twinkling eyes. "Care to practice some Ataru katas with me, padawan?" 

"You mean--"

"I figure some simple katas can't hurt more than the electroshocks from the droid," he smirks. "And I won't tell Master Che if you won't." 

The padawan grins and jumps to his feet. Already, he feels a new pool of energy filling his body. The Master and Padawan ignite their sabers and synchronously them back into the starting position of form IV. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Padawan Anakin is such a disaster and Obi is such a Tired Dad, I love them. Come say hi on Tumblr-- @hellowkatey


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